1. Field of the Invention
Apparatuses and methods consistent with the present invention relate to determining noise, and more particularly, to determining noise which is capable of reducing incorrect discrimination between a texture area of low level which is similar to noise and noise having a great level difference with respect to neighboring pixels.
2. Description of the Related Art
The digital broadcasting service, which has been tried due to the advance of video and audio compression technology, has become widespread beyond the experimental stage. Although the digital broadcast enables a user to watch high definition (HD) video signals which provide a clearer image than standard definition (SD) videos signals, there is still a continuous demand for a more vivid and clearer image.
However, the digital broadcast cannot be free from noise. That is, the digital broadcast is affected by various sources such as noise existing in the manufacturing phase, noise generated during transmission, noise generated during decoding operation, and noise generated from an additional process for improving image quality.
A related art method to remove noise from an image is to reduces only noise signals through filtering without causing damage to an edge or a texture area. In general, the edge or the texture area is determined depending on pixel values. To this end, a texture area of low level which is similar to noise is incorrectly determined to be noise, or noise having a great level difference is incorrectly determined to be a texture area. Therefore, there is a demand for solving this problem.